Page 44 of Teach Me
“Maybe, smart-ass. Here, put these on and get in the kitchen.” I handed him the clothes. “I’ll make some hot chocolate. Or tea. Or coffee. Whatever you like.”
Maybe Cameron read the concern in my eyes because his expression softened. “That sounds good. Any of them. Or even all three. I’m fine, seriously.”
“I don’t have a good track record with ‘I’m fine,’” I muttered as I ushered him into the kitchen.
Cam stopped in his tracks and spun around, causing me to nearly bump into him. He caught me by the arms as I stumbled, melted warmth in his eyes as he said, “Who takes care of you?”
“Huh?” I blinked. “I do. And I know, yes, you can take care of yourself,” I continued, thinking he was about to make a point about being a grown man, which I was well aware of. “But?—”
“That’s not what I meant.” He shook his head. “I…I don’t want to be something you have to take care of.”
“That’s not at all what I meant, Cameron. I want to…” I trailed off, the meaning of his words—both the spoken and unspoken—sinking in. I cupped his jaw, the bite of stubbleagainst the pad of my thumb soothing and familiar as I met his eyes. “You’re not a task to complete or something I have to take care of. You’re not a burden.”
His gaze burned back into mine. “Then let me take care of you, too. While we’re doing this together, let me take care of you, too.”
He staggered me, caught me off guard, and while I didn’t move an inch physically, inside me, something shifted, a swooping sensation in my stomach, and then a strange lightness rushed in. This was usually the part where my guard went up, where I would seal that sensation off into a different compartment and try to forget it existed. I wondered what would happen if I didn’t do that, if I allowed that feeling to persist inside me, to spread out and sprawl, to take root. The prospect had me inhaling a shaky breath, and then I nodded. “Okay.”
“Good.” I felt him smile into the kiss I brushed over his lips and carried that sensation with me as we broke apart and I continued to the stove, rummaging around beside it until I found the kettle. I felt his eye on me, and when I glanced back, he’d hopped onto the counter and was watching me with a little half smile. “Never thought I’d be sitting in the kitchen of my professor’s house while he makes me tea.”
“And hot chocolate and coffee,” I quipped back, and his smile broke into a full-on grin that might as well have been the sun breaking through the clouds.
Once I’d finished concocting our assortment of beverages, I set them all in the middle of the table and gestured for him to join me.
“This is ridiculous, you know that?” he said, eyeing the spread.
I shrugged. “Sometimes ridiculous is exactly what you need.” I waited until he selected a mug of tea and then pushed a mugof hot chocolate toward him, as well. “Will you tell me about the visit with your parents?”
Cameron’s gaze slowly dropped from mine to the steaming mug in his hands. He took a sip, the hot liquid seeming to relax the tight grip he held on his emotions.
“It’s complicated. It always is, right?They’recomplicated. I’m complicated.” The way his fingers danced on the rim of the mug seemed like a sign of discomfort, and I reached across the table to lay a hand over his. He glanced down at our hands, an unreadable expression flickering across his face before he turned his gaze back to meet mine. “It’s hard for me to escape feeling like they still see me as the kid who messed up and can’t get anything right. It’s not like they say that outright. They’re not abusive. It’s just this…” He ran his hand through his hair, pulling at it with frustration. “Undercurrent. I don’t know if I’m projecting or if it’s real, to be honest. It feels like since I left home, and everything that happened after, I’m no longer the same person I was before, yet they still want me to be the kid who did everything they told me to while looking at me as the one who did things they taught me not to do. Does that make sense?” His confusion was almost tangible, a haze of miscommunication and heartache that made the kitchen air feel heavy.
“Perfect sense,” I replied gently, squeezing his hand. “You’ve grown and evolved, but sometimes those who’ve known us the longest struggle to see past the image they’ve held on to for years.”
He nodded, a flicker of relief passing over his face that I understood. “Yeah, it’s like they’re stuck in a time warp and can’t…or won’t…move forward with me. At the same time, it makes me feel really ungrateful because they fucking raised me. They got me to rehab when I really needed it. I know they love me. I know they want what’s best for me, but I don’t thinkwe’re ever going to agree on what that is, and I can’t get them to understand that pills and college aren’t the reason I am who am, that a liberal arts education didn’t make memoregay.” He scratched the edge of his thumbnail over the Silver Ridge U logo blazoned on the mug. “I just wish they could like who I am now. See past the mistakes I’ve made to the progress.”
My chest tightened at his words, and I glimpsed the vulnerability in his eyes. “Was there an argument while you were home? Something that brought all of this to the fore again?”
He sighed. “The first night I got there, I told them I was thinking about staying here again for the summer, maxing out summer courses so I could graduate in August instead of next winter. And then I refused to take the drug test they leave out for me every time I come home. It escalated from there.”
“Oh?” Cameron’s summer plans were news to me, as well, and a soft ache spread through my chest thinking about it. We didn’t talk about the future. There was never supposed to be a future. And while I was obviously aware that he’d eventually graduate and move on—and of course, I wanted him to go live his life—I was increasingly reluctant for that to happen anytime soon. I’d made a classic mistake assuming that as long as we were careful, we’d have longer.
“Yeah. I talked to my advisor last week before the break, and he thinks I’ll be able to manage it. I’ll probably have to cut back a bit with work, but long term, it saves me a little money to graduate over the summer.”
And there it was. Future plans, the inevitable separation looming in the distance. I felt a pang of regret, a selfish wish that we could stand still in time and let the world turn without us. But I knew better.
“That sounds like a wise decision,” I forced out, sounding more enthusiastic than I felt. The last thing I wanted was for my self-serving disappointment to cloud his achievement, especiallyon top of the weight of his parents’ apparent disapproval. “So your folks didn’t like the idea?”
A laugh escaped him, gritty and lacking any true humor. “Not at all. Especially Dad. He started in on how I’m already barely keeping my head above water. He thinks I’m setting myself up for another failure. He meant relapse, too, but he didn’t say that aloud. He thinks I’ll fall back into old habits. My mom was disappointed because she’d been hoping I’d come back as a counselor for their church’s summer camp. I never committed, but I didn’t say no outright initially because I’d been thinking about it from a resume-boosting angle when I apply for grad school. But the more I’ve thought about it, I can’t do it. I love kids, but I can’t go along with the whole religious aspect that the camp centers around. It’s not what I believe.” He shook his head. “It feels like a betrayal of myself to get involved. So then my mom said she was disappointed that they’d ever agreed to let me come here in the first place, that she no longer recognized me and was sad that I’d left home her son and come back a stranger.”
The heaviness of his words studded the air between us, a bittersweet cocktail of self-discovery, parental disappointment, and the looming uncertainty of the future. I felt intense sympathy for him.
“I’m really sorry that happened, Cameron.”
He gave me a half-hearted smile as he switched over and took a long sip of the hot chocolate. “I thought coming out was the hardest thing I’d ever do, but it feels like they’d rather I pretend to be someone else for their comfort than accept me for who I am. Just your regular ol’ atheist gay dude.”
“You’re much more than that, sweetheart. I hope you know that. You’re smart, witty, empathetic, thoughtful, determined, breathtakingly gorgeous…”
“You think Clark Kent ever resented being Superman? Or, like, the whole dichotomy of who he was versus who he presented himself as? That’s the whole premise of superheroes, right? They have two identities. The superhero and the citizen. Both respected and loved, but truly known by few. I’m not a superhero or anything, but when I’m around my folks, I always feel like they liked me in disguise better, like if I could keep wearing that costume, everything would be better. But the thing is, I didn’t really understand how much of myself I disguised until I left home.”